June 29, 2018

George Will - not so useful, just an idiot.

I had time this morning to read a number of articles/posts on a broad range of topics of the day. Much of it had to do with the the president's potential nominees for replacing Justice Kennedy who is retiring from the Supreme Court. But the one that caught my eye was this article in the American Spectator by Emerald Robinson, The Collapse of the Never-Trump Conservatives. Probably because it meshed well with my tongue-in-cheek take on whether George Will's departure from the Republican Party. Was Will being a political genius in leaving the Republican Party in hopes of creating a split in the Democrats between moderates and progressives, thus ensuring continued Republican hegemony in the Congress and White House? Or was he just a useful idiot for either the Republicans or the Democrats?

It turns out, according to the Spectator article that he's just clueless and basically an island unto himself. So not useful, just an idiot:

George Will, was not for surrender or appeasement. He had finally found an enemy to relish: his fellow conservatives. One measure of Will’s self-exile was the indifference his most recent column elicited, though it urged Republicans to vote against the GOP at the midterms “for their own good.” Was anyone still listening? It was Will who sagely warned the world mere days before the election: “Until the Republican Party gets right with minorities in this country, it’s never going to win another presidential election.” Not content with that spectacular blunder, Will had doubled down with attacks on Billy Graham and Vice President Mike Pence. The symbolism of such stunts, at least, was clear. As a model conservative, Will stands alone in his own estimation. And what could be more conservative than voting for liberal Democrats?

In that sense, Will’s latest column was merely the fitting coda to a long career of effete snobbery — one that had led him to “leave the party” before it won the White House and march off into the wilderness.